I normally don’t do individual song reviews, but I’m making an exception. I get many requests for reviews and many get turned away, many for being too mainstream. Not that I have problems with a more accessible sound if the music is still good, but my charter is to work around the edges and find [...]
On Friday (8-27-10) I saw Ruby Jane Smith perform at The Kessler Theater in Dallas, TX. I was going to write a review for the show, and then write Ruby a fan letter because I was so moved by the performance. As I was writing the letter I noticed I was writing a quasi review [...]
I had no idea what to expect when driving down into Dallas to see Willis Alan Ramsey perform. Information on the legendary, but somewhat reclusive songwriter is scant at best. No website, no calendar or social network sites to help. If you’re not religiously scanning the fine print of your local alternative newsweekly, and you [...]
(Possessed just released his latest album “Feed the Family” through Hillgrass Bluebilly Records, and it will be released worldwide Sep. 21st.) After recently reviewing the underground film The Folk Singer, I wanted to get more information about the “main character” (so to speak), the artist Possessed by Paul James, and luckily a check of his [...]
If someone asks you to define just what exactly you mean when you say “REAL” country or when you call someone an “Outlaw.” If words fail you when someone asks you to clarify what you mean when you say your music has to have “that sound.” When you say “I know it when I hear [...]
The Folk Singer is the exact right movie for this very moment in time. It courageously reaches down to the deepest measure of the human soul and spirit and mines what cannot be expressed in words. It says what we are all thinking, but were incapable heretofore of saying. You watch this movie and say, [...]
On Friday night I was treated to Western swing heaven as Ray Benson of Asleep At The Wheel brought his Bob Wills musical A Ride With Bob to my neck of the woods. (You can read my review of the show on the 9513.) The show featured a couple of guest artists, one being Ruby [...]
In one respect, we live in a blessed time in country music. If it was 1986, the superpickers of our generation would be stuffing a sock down the front of their spandex tights as hair designers kink their bangs and perm their mullet, getting them ready to go on stage and pull some ungodly bad [...]
On Friday night I was supposed to be long gone from Dallas, TX. But plans changed as they sometimes do, and I was able to cash in the consolation prize of watching two overlords of old school country cross paths at one of the best venues in the country in what turned out to be [...]
When maestro mandolin player and songwriter Jayke Orvis left the .357 String Band, some heavy metal transplants were screeching that he took all of their grittiness, guts, and anger with him. Taking that theory to its natural conclusion, I guess a few were expecting his solo project to be some sort of bloodletting ritual that [...]
Some might have though that this day would never happen, but with The Reverend Deadeye’s new album The Trials & Tribulations Of…, the Lord Jesus Christ is cool once again. The amount of one man band’s busting out of local scenes and making their way into the national eye has in no way diluted the [...]
I’m convinced. Ruby Jane was sent to earth by God to save country music. All accolades I lapped on the 15-year-old fiddle-playing fenom when I said You Need Ruby Jane In Your Life were validated, if not proved to be too tempered after seeing her live at Dallas’s historic Kessler Theater on Friday. Really, I [...]
Simply put, Brigitte London is one the best singers of our time, and if you have heard her, you’re nodding in agreement right now. On Tuesday (6-21) she will release her latest record called Bare Bones, which as the name implies, is just her, a guitar, and a little bit of reverb. No band, no [...]
Pound for pound, possibly the most underrated personality in music is the frontman and founder of the Legendary Shack Shakers, one Colonel JD Wilkes. Don’t take my word for it. Ask Jello Biafra of Alternative Tentacles and The Dead Kennedays who called JD Wilkes, “the last great Rock and Roll frontman.” Robert Plant is also [...]
Well I’m not too sure who the hell Larry is, and why his flask is so predominately edified in the band name. What I do know is that to a man, the attendees of this year’s Muddy Roots Festival stumbled out of the hills of east Tennessee saying Larry and His Flask stole the show, [...]
Wow. Well if you head isn’t already spinning from the caliber of recent REAL country music releases, it will be now. Lucky Tubb & The Modern Day Troubadours team up with the legendary Wayne “The Train” Hancock for an old school comic book style dynamic duo one two punch to the gut of mainstream pop [...]
Those that have been around here for a while know that I like to come out of left field with my vintage album suggestions. You already have a big stack of records, no need for me to rehash through them. Still I know some of you are rolling up to this thinking, “What kind of [...]
I picture a post-Apolcolyptic scene: ghost towns full of crumbling buildings and rubble, smoke filling the sky and blocking out the sun, the result of a society that gave no value to art, heritage, and truth; a vast wasteland of grayness. Then all of a sudden in the midst of all the death and decay, [...]
I’m going to have a lot to say about this record, but the upshot is that its damn good. It is an improvement from Hank III’s last offering Damn Right, Rebel Proud. It may not be his best album, or the album of the year, but considering all the different factors Hank had to juggle [...]
As part of the Tribeca Film Festival, the long awaited film about the White family of West Virginia called The Wild & Wonderful Whites has been made available through some pay-per-view and on-demand services (check your provider), and through Amazon.com. Just about a year ago this week, this film created high controversy when the trailer [...]
